Ask HN: Has anyone had success with SBIR grants and what is the process like?

4•lyfeninja•1h ago

I'm considering applying to a phase I topic that is a pretty good fit for our tech and we should meet all basic requirements (U S. Based, small business, etc.), but I'm unsure if the juice is worth the squeeze.

If anyone has any experience applying and going through the process I'd love to hear about it.

Things I'm curious about... - how competitive is it? - how detailed should proposals be? - am I guaranteed to hear back? - how long after closing is a decision made?

Thanks in advance.

Comments

ungreased0675•1h ago

There are a lot more phase I awards, so your chances are much higher. You will hear back.

For follow-on work you need to find government customers and project champions. The SBIR program isn’t your customer, it’s funding.

There are a lot of SBIR advisors out there, and some of them are predatory. They’ll promise contacts and contracts but you’ll definitely want to interview previous clients before paying anybody.

lyfeninja•1h ago

This is exactly the type of insight I'm looking for. Thanks!

The Inflation Gamble

The Backlash over Delivery Robots

GenDB – LLM-Powered Generative Query Engine

Electrocaloric effect

Scaling opencomputer from 1 VM to 1 million sandboxes

[x86] AI Compute Extensions (ACE) Specification

Your Definition of Done Is Wrong

FileZilla is still after 24 years

BrandScreen Launch – Screen brand before build

Three reasons fungi are not plants

Six Numbers from Running 1,500 AI Agents Simultaneously

DuckDuckGo Collaborations

Show HN: Ubercookie – A live demonstration of how websites can track you

VNX+: Self-contained RF payload for hosting AI/ML applications out of the box

Show HN: Gptbased – LLM leaderboard that emails you when to switch

Midjourney Full Body Ultrasonic CT Scanner

Learning VPP: Filtering Packets at 100GbE Line Rate

Midjourney Medical

Next-Latent Prediction Transformers Learn Compact World Models - MS Research

Show HN: Local personal data redaction for any AI tools

Manhattan's fastest bike messenger (1985) [video]

Show HN: Draft, Open Source Agent Context Sync/Collaboration

Vevey – AI game dev for kids to build games, together

Code Intelligence MCP Server

Show HN: Rank scratch tickets in your state by expected value

Former Tesla Exec Is Building the Home Heat Pump Musk Promised

Miuse: Agents for Guidance with Physical Tasks

Show HN: A world cup app built by football lovers

Show HN: I built a smart screen recording macOS

Tim Cook warns Apple may raise prices as memory costs surge